"was decreed a holiday for ten weeks on which offices, factories, and stores, except drug and food stores, must use only such fuel as is necessary to prevent damage. The order under which these restrictions were made, according to the Fuel Administration's statement to the press, was 'designed to distribute with absolute impartiality the burden,' and it added that the Fuel Administration 'counts upon the complete patriotic coöperation of every individual, firm, and corporation affected by the order in its enforcement.' We read further that the government aims to carry out its plan without 'undue interference with the ordinary course of business' and earnestly desires to 'prevent entirely any dislocation of industry or labor.' SHUT-DOWN OF INDUSTRY TO SAVE COAL "Fuel Administrator Garfield hoped to save 30,000,000 tons of coal and to give the railroads a chance to straighten out the transportation tangle in the eastern states, according to a Washington correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, who notes that the measures were taken by the President and the government heads 'as a desperate remedy.' The closing down of the greater part of the nation's industries, trades, and business, says the New York _Sun_, is the 'fruit of the insane, criminal starvation of the railroads by the government for a generation'; yet regardless of what it may cost any individual or group of individuals, the order is to be 'greeted without protest.' A surgeon was more welcome than an undertaker, in the view of this daily, and a disaster of the second degree and a temporary one is better than a disaster of the first degree and a permanent one. If the five-day term clears the railroads and the Monday holidays set the trains running with their former clocklike regularity, the _Sun_ added, we can resume being the 'busiest nation on earth, instead of being an industrial paralytic.' While recognizing that the order struck Utica and all cities in the designated territory 'a staggering blow,' the _Utica Press_ holds that there is really nothing a patriotic city could do about it save to accept the situation with as good grace as possible, and if the result hasten the end all will agree that it was a good investment. The Chicago _Herald_ considered the order 'a tremendous decision' carrying with it a 'tremendous responsibility,' and while the chief industries of the principal part of a nation can not be stopped even for a day without disorganization and loss, still the country is willing to pay the price 'if it is the necessary cost of preventing the suffering of hundreds and thousands, perhaps millions, of individuals and of keeping certain indispensable war and public functions going at their accustomed speed.'"